Corporate Pride, one month later
recent news makes our satirical show look less absurd than our current reality...
Hello! The constant chaos of Pride Weekend is behind us and June has cum and gone. It feels like our Corporate Pride show was one million years ago (it was June 1, so spiritually, it kind of was that long ago). We’re proud of our latest creation, so we thought we’d give you a little reminder of all the fun we had (franchise-worthy fun, of course), and delve into some of the, erm… welp, jokes that became too real.
xoxo
Babz and Cass and Caty
PS: Our next show will be in late August; follow us for updates!
When I first started to write this little blurb, it was early June, and it felt like Starbucks gave me a gift. Workers in Virginia had started coming forward claiming that management had removed all their pride decorations that they had put up in the beginning of June, citing a new company policy that banned all decorations for any event… sus for any chain of stores that proudly announced its “most festive” holiday merch yet just last October.
Even more sinister was Corporate's refusal to acknowledge that the deco removals were happening at all, while simultaneously refusing to negotiate with its new union over the policy. All the while, more workers started coming forward. In Virginia, it was a regional decision; in Georgia, it was because it was unsafe to climb ladders; in Maryland, it was because people felt excluded when they saw the rainbow… The list goes on. In total, workers from at least 21 states had come forward.
It stopped feeling like a gift, and more like a curse.
Then came the Target debacle. Citing the safety of its workers, Target began removing some of the pride merch in its stores. The company’s statement (linked above) said it was removing the merch that had been at the center of the controversies… which turned out to be items like children’s books and tuck-friendly swimsuits. According to NPR, Target was staunchly silent about whether it was taking any other measures to protect its workers from harassment, like increasing security. No, it seems, backing down on its support for the queer community and hiding the products it already had stocked would be enough.
Again, things got more sinister when a couple in Florida were prevented from buying a pride-themed onesie for their baby. The same thing happened in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Authenticity, as I'm sure a thousand people have contended before me, is the essence of Queerness. For refusing to be anyone other than who we are, we open ourselves up to a great many horrendous potential consequences. I don’t need to list any of them here, you can go ahead and [insert your horrendous consequence]. And so, in order to live as our most authentic selves we gather in groups, like so many flamingos, in an attempt to stay safe. But enough with the digression.
It appears that sentiment does not extend to our Corporate Allies. Despite their many protestations that they remain committed to supporting us Queers, their real commitment was always, and will always be, to their shareholders.
And I mean, that’s kind of fine. We have Always persevered, even before we were seen as a viable source of profit. And Ultimately, do we need Target’s pride merch, or to drink an obviously gay Bud Lite?
Not really.
But as this past month has unfolded, the whole Corporate Pride joke we had made, stopped feeling very Joke-y. It started to feel like yet another alarm bell for the growing backlash to the acceptance of queer people in society at large… not a very happy note to end the month on.
-Babz
Honestly one of the biggest reasons I suggested we do a Corporate Pride-themed show was because I’ve always loved joke advertisements and fake commercials. It’s also kind of an easy target; while there’s a lot to mine there, making fun of rainbow capitalism is nothing groundbreaking. The bank is gay for the month! Ha ha!
However, as Babz aptly points out in their essay, reality these days can often feel more absurd and cruel than even the most biting, over-the-top satire. (Not Pride-related, but the reason the Succession co-creator avoided using some real-life examples from rich, powerful, conservative families was because it was “so far off the rails [he] couldn’t even comprehend it.”)
Big corporations are probably always going to commit awful acts, and in a way, Pride month is starting to feel a little like Halloween. A powerful company that consistently disregards the queer and trans community might be scary, but a business that acts that way while proudly draped in rainbow is a whole other type of frightful, one we can’t help but laugh at, because what else is there to do?
I was honestly very honored to see that essentially every performer we had on our Corporate Pride show presented an act that was tailor-made to the theme. Queensiñera crafted what was probably one of the only deadpan burlesque acts I’ve ever seen, blankly twirling in sequins and shopping bags (from Target, of course) and stripping away layers until we finally get a glimpse at humanity.
Klondyke and A Drag Queen Named Darius did drag acts that riffed on the importance of being adequately compensated for one’s labor and how exhausting it can be to pursue that. Darius’s Hooters Girl act had a deliciously meta surprise: They passed out foil packets of chicken wings to the audience that they cooked themself earlier that day — in costume, no less.
Creative work doesn’t have to be crafted for a specific show to succeed, either. At the start of the show, we showed a short video by Loie Plautz and sketch group Queer Window. “Manpons” is a satirical ad hawking tampons for trans men that come in hyper-masc varieties like “shark” and “bear maul.” It wasn’t made for us, but it was the perfect Corporate Pride opener. Similarly, Jonathan Thomas’s thoughtful stand-up comedy would probably succeed in most rooms, but it felt especially at home here, and not just because he’s a gay corporate lawyer.
Babz and I (with help from our co-producer Caty) also created and performed a series of bits, from fake podcast ads for Yassper mattresses to a coming-out ceremony for temporarily queer companies (Raytheon is Gaytheon, Toyota is Boy-on-Boy-ota, Walmart is RuPaulmart, you get it). Even Strata, our poster designer, wrote a delightful rhyming spiel that doubled as an actual ad for his design services.
It’s true that the world is wide and largely wretched, even when we still have the ability to find ourselves in spaces abuzz with queer joy. Or, think of it this way: Even in this wide wretched world, we can still find ourselves in spaces abuzz with queer joy, queer rage, queer confusion, queer creation — queer community. As we make our way into July, we shouldn’t take that for granted.
-Cassidy Dawn Graves
thank you both for writing such deeply thoughtful pieces. a necessary and sobering reminder of the world we live in, accompanied by the sparkling resilience and authenticity of the worlds we create. bravo!